Nineteenth-century Bukhara's leading enlightener: astronomer, calligrapher and painter, three times a member of embassies to St Petersburg, and a writer who urged reform of the emirate.
Ahmad Donish was born in 1827 in the village of Sugut near Bukhara (today's Shofirkon district) to a poor mullah's family. His first teacher was his mother, who could read, write and compose verse — a rarity at the time. Taking the pen name Donish (“the knowing”), he studied at a madrasa and taught himself astronomy, geometry, medicine, history, music, calligraphy and painting. His talents brought him to the court of Emir Nasrullah as a painter and calligrapher, and later as court astronomer.
St Petersburg and the case for reform
Donish travelled to St Petersburg with Bukharan embassies in 1857, 1869–1870 and 1874. Seeing Russia's factories, schools, theatre and system of government convinced him that Bukhara's education, courts and administration needed reform. The emir rejected his proposals and Donish was kept away from court. In his “Rare Events” (Navodir ul-vaqoe, 1870–1889) he sharply criticised the education system, the courts and the economy, and in a treatise on the lives of the emirs of Bukhara he analysed the rule of the Manghit dynasty.
Legacy
Ahmad Donish died in Bukhara in 1897; the cemetery where he was buried was destroyed in Soviet times. His ideas deeply influenced Sadriddin Ayni and the Bukharan Jadids, and he is regarded as a founder of the modern enlightenment movement in Central Asia. Writing in Persian (Tajik), he is honoured in Tajikistan too, where the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences bears his name. Bukhara has a street named after him.
In 1804 Eltuzar of the Qungrat tribe took the title of khan, founding Khiva's last dynasty. The 19th century was Itchan Kala's great building age: under Allakuli Khan came the Tash Hauli palace (1830–1838) and his madrasa and caravanserai, and in 1842 the outer town, Dishan Kala, was walled. The Kalta Minor beside the Muhammad Amin Khan Madrasa (1851–1855) was left unfinished when the khan was killed. The madrasa of Muhammad Rahim Khan II followed in 1871 and, in 1908–1910, the Islam Khoja madrasa and Khiva's tallest minaret. Itchan Kala is thus largely 18th–19th-century architecture; it joined the UNESCO list in 1990.
In the 19th century the British and Russian empires competed for influence in Central Asia, a rivalry known as the Great Game. In December 1838 the British officer Charles Stoddart arrived in Bukhara to negotiate with Emir Nasrullah, but was arrested and held for years in the city's prison. Arthur Conolly, who came in 1841 to secure his release, was imprisoned too. In June 1842 both were executed as spies in the square before the Ark. The missionary Joseph Wolff, who travelled to Bukhara to learn their fate, published an account in 1845 that made the story famous in Europe. Bukhara's Zindan museum shows the pit in which prisoners were kept.
From 9 May to 17 June 1865 General Mikhail Chernyayev's troops besieged Tashkent, then part of the Khanate of Kokand. Alimqul, Kokand's de facto ruler, was killed leading the defence, and the city passed to the Russian Empire. In 1866, at war with the Emirate of Bukhara, Russian forces took Khujand, Ura-Tyube and Jizzakh. In 1867 the Governorate-General of Turkestan was created with its seat in Tashkent, headed first by General Konstantin von Kaufman. A new European-style Russian town grew up beside the old city, and Tashkent became the region's administrative centre.
Samarkand falls and Bukhara becomes a protectorate
In May 1868 Kaufman's troops defeated the army of Emir Muzaffar of Bukhara on the Chupan-Ata heights and entered Samarkand. In June, while the main force crushed the emir again at Zirabulak, the small garrison left in Samarkand's citadel was besieged by townspeople and the forces of the Shakhrisabz begs; among the defenders was the painter Vasily Vereshchagin. Under the peace signed at the end of June, Samarkand and Kattakurgan passed to Russia as the Zeravshan District, and the Emirate of Bukhara became a Russian protectorate. Vereshchagin's Turkestan series, including scenes of the siege, hangs in Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery.
In spring 1873 several Russian columns under the overall command of General Kaufman crossed the deserts from different directions into Khorezm, and at the end of May Khiva surrendered without a fight. Under the Treaty of Gandimian, signed in August, Muhammad Rahim Khan II kept his throne but lost the right to conduct foreign policy without Russian consent; the slave trade and slavery were abolished and a heavy indemnity imposed. The right bank of the Amu Darya, most of today's Karakalpakstan, passed to Russia as the Amu Darya Department, administered from the fort of Petro-Alexandrovsk, now Turtkul. Khiva survived as a protectorate until 1920.
In 1873 a broad revolt against Khudayar Khan's heavy taxes swept the Fergana Valley, led by a pretender known as Pulat Khan. In 1875 Khudayar was overthrown and fled to Russian territory, and the rising turned against Russia. Troops under General Kaufman and Mikhail Skobelev occupied the valley, and in February 1876 an imperial decree abolished the khanate, replacing it with Fergana Oblast. A new administrative centre, New Margelan, was built — later renamed Skobelev and, from 1924, Fergana. Khudayar Khan's palace in Kokand now houses the regional museum.
